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Disability employer hits out at NDIS critics

TIM PALMER: Australia's largest employer of people with disabilities, the Endeavour Foundation, has hit out at those business groups critical of the NDIS.

Chief executive officer, David Barbagallo has said a report by the Productivity Commission has clearly shown the scheme will return social and economic dividends in the long term.

Mr Barbagallo told our Social Affairs reporter, Sally Sara, the current disability support system is broken and must be fixed.

DAVID BARBAGALLO: This is not just a system that needs more money, the system is actually broken. There's eight of them in Australia, people are treated differently around the country. It's broken, it's fractured, its unequal. So when the Productivity Commission looked at that the landscape, they saw that it was broken and it needed, in a sense radical change.

SALLY SARA: Broken in what way?

DAVID BARBAGALLO: Firstly when there's insufficient funds and there's not early intervention, you end up with a crisis emergency based system. And so instead of people getting early help to prevent them falling into crisis, what happens - and you have the very real cases of where families relinquish their adult children. They turn up at the door of a hospital and they walk away.

If you have children, can you imagine abandoning them because that's the only way they can get the assistance they need. There are countless patents in hospital beds around this country that are in those beds for no other reason than they have a disability. They have no medical conditions.

SALLY SARA: What evidence is there that the NDIS would unlock some of the economic potential so that some people with disabilities may be able to contribute through employment and other mechanisms to the general community?

DAVID BARBAGALLO: There are countless studies. PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, that show that as few as 2 per cent of people who have a disability went back into the workforce, then there'd be over $1 billion contribution to GDP. You know, the likes of PwC and Deloitte have put their names to some pretty compelling statistics. I think Deloitte has said that if 60 per cent of people with disability went into the workforce it would add something like 40 billion to our GDP, now I think that's an ambitious target. But yet those are the sorts of numbers we're talking about.

SALLY SARA: In an election year and in a week where the prospect of a $12 billion hole in budget projections has come to light, how difficult is it to argue your case?

There's obviously a lot of caution from business that they're recognising that there may need to be some restraint across the board.

DAVID BARBAGALLO: I think it's a question of priorities. What I see is countless - thousands and tens of thousands of people's lives who are greatly diminished because they don't have access to supports that they should have. To live an ordinary life and to have access you know, to proper health and proper employment.

If we don't invest this money, we'll spend it anyway. If we invest it we'll get it back. It seems to me there aren't too many proposals on the table that have those unique features.

TIM PALMER: David Barbagallo the CEO of The Endeavour Foundation, speaking with our social affairs reporter Sally Sara.